Jeff Kolkey writes about issues, trends and public safety in Rockford and Winnebago County.

In house of horrors, survivor must live with cruelest 'punishment' of all

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By Jeff Kolkey

Jeff Kolkey writes about issues and trends in Rockford and Winnebago County. He also covers major breaking crime and fire news, notable criminal trials and the trends beyond the headlines that shape the region. A graduate of Northern Illinois
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Jeff Kolkey writes about issues and trends in Rockford and Winnebago County. He also covers major breaking crime and fire news, notable criminal trials and the trends beyond the headlines that shape the region. A graduate of Northern Illinois University, Kolkey lives in Rockford with his family. He has covered education, the city of Rockford and other beats for the Rockford Register Star since October 2005.

This house in the 600 block of 11th Street in Rockford, pictured on Wednesday was home to Kaitlyn Head, her two older sisters, her mother Melanie Grant, and her mother's boyfriend, Duran Johnson. Prosecutors called it a “house of horrors.”

If there is a silver lining after 3-year-old Kaitlyn Head's abuse, torture and murder at the hands of the people who were supposed to love and protect her, it is her older sister Kay.Kay now lives with family in Chicago. To say the least, Kay, 13, is an impressive young woman and I am not using her real name out of respect for her age and privacy.Despite all she endured, Kay is exceptionally smart and well-spoken. She carried herself throughout the criminal proceedings with poise, dignity and maturity beyond her years.But Kay must live forever with a secret pain only she can know. It was a special "punishment" reserved just for her, one that her sisters did not have to endure.Kay survived a "house of horrors" inside the lower apartment of 614 11th Street where her baby sister eventually succumbed to prolonged abuse and died March 16, 2011.Like her sisters, Kay was forced to do "extreme punishments" created by her mother, Melanie Grant, and her live-in boyfriend Duran Johnson. They called the bizarre exercises innocuous names like "walk it out" and "stretch it out." But these were anything but harmless exercises.

JEFF KOLKEY/RRSTAR.COM

Duran Johnson, 40, was found guilty Nov. 6 of first-degree murder in the March 16, 2011, killing of 3-year-old Kaitlynn Head. Judge Gary Pumilia on Wednesday sentenced Johnson to six decades in prison.

The children were forced to carry heavy phone books for prolonged, torturous periods of time.They were forced to hold a "plank" position with phone books strapped to their tiny bodies for hours and days at a time. If they faltered during one of these sessions they were beaten with a thick leather belt – the imprint of which was left across Kaitlyn's tiny face and seared into the consciousness of anyone who saw her autopsy photos.Kaitlyn's body had not developed enough to be able to withstand the abuse that her older sisters could survive. She couldn't do the exercises as well. Her butt was too high in the air. Her tiny arms struggled to hold the books. They trembled with the effort to hold up her own body weight. She wet herself.When she faltered, Grant and Johnson would lift Kaitlyn by her ears. They were horribly bruised and damaged when she died.

Melanie M. Grant

Like her younger sisters, Kay went hungry when she was on punishment.She suffered through many of the beatings with the same thick leather belt.Kay said that unlike her sisters, her mother would not allow Johnson to administer her beatings. Those were doled out by Grant herself. Grant, after all, had to be careful when beating Kay. She didn't want to send Kay to Maud E. Johnson Elementary with bruises her teachers might notice.Often Kay's sisters were still awake well into the night performing their "punishments" while Kay was allowed to go to bed. Kay had to maintain her status at Maud Johnson - where her principal knew Kay as a well behaved and good student - to allow the house of child torture to continue.And although she endured nearly all the same punishments as her sister, Kay must endure her own special torture the rest of her life. And it's one of the cruelest abuses of all doled out by her mother and her mother's boyfriend.She must live with the knowledge that she was forced to administer some of her baby sister's tortures by rubbing the soles of Kaitlyn's raw and damaged feet with a bristled hair brush while the girl cried from the pain.Kay was also forced to inform on her sisters if they faltered during a "punishment." Kay knew that if she didn't do as she was told, Grant and Johnson would beat and starve her.Judge Gary Pumilia was incensed by this special cruelty.

Pumilia sentenced Johnson to 50 years in prison for the murder of Kaitlyn and two years for helping Grant conceal Kaitlyn's murder for two days before reporting it to authorities.And for intimidating Kay into harming Kaitlyn, Johnson was given the maximum available sentence of 10 years for a total of 62 years in prison. He must serve the entire sentence. At 40 years old, Johnson won't likely ever be a free man."Your acts and the acts of Melanie (Grant) were bad enough," Pumilia said. "This is unconscionable. How you could drag a young girl into your circle of brutality and horror and make her participate in it."